Epson MovieMate 25 Projector Review

April 17, 2006 - Art Feierman

Image Presets

The MovieMate 25 offers 4 different Presets – predefined settings of brightness, contrast, gamma, and color saturation, so that you can quickly select the setting that looks best for what you are watching.

The four controls are (from “best quality” – which is also the dimmest – typical for projectors), to brightest:
Theater Black
Theater
Living Room
Dynamic

Theater Black, as noted is the least bright, but maximizes contrast for best black levels, and what provides the overall best setting for movies. In addition, the fan runs quieter in this mode. To give you an idea of the differences, the next four images have been shot with the exact same exposure, and I have captured each image showing the preset mode in the upper right hand corner.

As you can see, the differences are rather significant. You will definitely note the extra detail in the shadow areas in the Theater Black mode vs Theater. The other two are so much brighter that you can see more detail there, but, if I had lightend the Theater Black mode (by overexposing it, it would have shown more shadow detail than either the LivingRoom or Dynamic settings.

Certainly you can appreciate from the images that the Theater Black mode is the most striking, with a huge difference between the bright ares and the darkest.

Lens throw and lens shift

The 1.5:1 zoom ratio provides very good placement flexibility. If you are using the provided 80″ diagonal screen, you can place the front of the projector anywhere from 6.6 feet to 9.9 feet from the screen. If you are using a different sized screen, the proportions remain the same. For example, with a 100″ screen, that screen is 25% larger, so the distances would now be from 8.25 feet to 12.4 feet.

The vertical lens shift lets you maintain the desired rectangular image (no keystoning), over a wide range with the projector able to sit from just below the bottom of the screen to near the top. Horizontal lens shift of 25% even allows the projector to not have to be centered with the screen. You can place the projector well to the right or left of center. Very handy!

Screen Door Effect

Because of the pixel structure, sitting too close can make watching the image appear like you are looking through a screen door. I already discussed the pixelization in the image quality section. The Epson is more susceptable than a DLP projector of the same resolution, so you’ll want to sit a little further back. Even if you can see a bit of the pixelization in bright areas at 2 times screen width, many won’t mind sitting closer.